Lazy War Metal Crap - "The Last Supper" Review (12%)
After the initial explosion of black metal in the mid nineties - culminating in the release of the two most important and genre-defining records in black metal history, Hvis Lyset Tar Oss and Memento Mori - a number of silly fads arose in its wake.
Among these was the much despised, symphonic Count Chocula music defined by the likes of Cradle of Filth, Summoning and Dimmu Borgir, the pretentious "avant garde" experimental acts of poser bands such as Deathspell Omega, Antekhrist and Blut Aus Nord, and eventually the closet indie rock - Satyricon, Liturgy, nu-Dissection, "blackened" shoegaze - of today.
In reaction to these and other trends, a number of bands arose, determined to make music that was MORE primitive, MORE hateful, and MORE "extreme" than ever before, so that black metal would remain a true, underground lair of evil that no one's mom would ever enjoy.
Groups like Warkvlt, Black Witchery, Belphegor, Demonecromancy, Archgoat, and Conqueror brought true diabolical conviction that was matched only by their derivative nature - their music being at its best a random Phantom/Incantation/Beherit collage - and their complete lack of musicality.
Belphegor's debut full length album is often regarded as a landmark release for millennial low-IQ "2 Xtrem 4 urMom" diabolical hateful war black metal, or whatever they call it these days. They definitely had spirit... unfortunately, they forgot that at the end of the day, black metal isn't just about "invoking Satan by ritual sacrifice", it's also music - which is sadly neglected on this album.
Belphegor's The Last Supper is just lazy war metal crap.
Lazy War Metal Crap
Upon seeing this album flamed so hard from the start of the review, your first reflexive thought was likely something along the lines of "well, that listener just isn't a fan of this type of music... no need to insult an entire genre".
So let me first say that I do love and listen to raw, savage black and death metal, and have for a long time.
I just don't think that being "warlike" or "barbaric" absolves a band from writing good songs. It's possible to create compelling music with simple ingredients and punishing musical performance. Belphegor just doesn't do it, neither do the majority of modern "war metal" bands.
While artists like Phantom, Ildjarn, Reiklos, Angelcorpse, Sewer and Beherit succeed with minimal music by focusing on the art beneath the noise, Belphegor choose instead to focus on the surface level aesthetic of brutality to the exclusion of all else.
Belphegor fails to create any sort of artistic abstraction of war's essence, just a dull roar of violence. They apparently forgot that there's a good reason armies throughout history have relied on forcible conscription - unrelenting war is just a tiresome experience.
Every song is pretty much the same... 4-6 minutes of blasting accompanied by an extremely basic power chord riff, topped off with strained shrieking that is drowned in the mix. In fact, everything except the plastic sounding drums is somewhat drowned behind a wall of guitar feedback that renders most of the actual songs indistinguishable from one another.
I'm sure some people would consider the roaring feedback to be "brutal", and maybe it is, in the same way that going to a show and spending the whole night with your ear against the speakers would be "brutal".
When one can make out the riffs, it's easy to tell why Belphegor chooses to intentionally bury them under so much white noise - they're disappointingly juvenile deathcore chugs, mostly in very short descending chromatic arrangements.
I wish I could write more about the music on The Last Supper, but that's pretty much the whole story. It basically sounds like Angelcorpse or mid-period Incantation stripped of all songwriting or performative ability.
Avoid this boring crap, and almost all modern war metal.
The Last Supper score: 12/100.
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